"Hey, listen up. I called off the White Rage Technique, so why is the damage you guys are dealing still falling short of Nagato's?!" Kabuto grumbled to the crowd, adjusting his glasses.
"Heh, as I thought, a place like this is perfect for displaying my art, un!" Deidara murmured, caressing the clay bird resting in his hand.
Kisame, who no longer held Samehada in his grip, gazed at the Allied Shinobi Forces and let out a sharp grin. "I'd like to do my part for the sake of a world free of lies, Kanon."
Standing right beside Konan, Karin stared at Kanon, her face flushed with a crimson blush. That's right, Karin had also chosen to join Akatsuki at this very moment.
Konan gently grasped Kanon's hand. Looking down at the Allied Forces and the Hokage below without a single shred of fear, she spoke softly to Kanon:
"Kanon, Akatsuki will always be your home. No matter what you choose to do, we will always stand by your side."
Kanon looked back at the comrades gathered behind her, and then down at the Allied Shinobi Forces. Her shoulders began to tremble slightly as tears welled up and slipped from her eyes, tears born of pure exhilaration and joy.
Witnessing this display from a distance, Madara nodded slightly and muttered, "So it's that Nagato brat, is it? He certainly knows how to wield the Rinnegan well."
At this exact moment, the current roster of Akatsuki stood fully assembled!
Kanon, Nagato, Konan, Deidara, Kakuzu, Hidan, Kisame, Karin, Kabuto, alongside Obito within the Kamui dimension, and Zetsu lingering nearby.
On the other side of the battlefield, Orochimaru was sprinting alongside Suigetsu toward the clearing where the Five Kage had previously clashed with Kanon.
Before long, they stumbled upon an unconscious Gaara. The young Kazekage was catastrophically injured; had they arrived even a moment later, he would have been a corpse. Orochimaru hastily applied emergency treatment to restore a fraction of his vitality and stabilize his life force.
As for any deeper medical intervention, that would have to wait for proper Medical-nin.
Suigetsu hoisted Gaara over his shoulder, lagging slightly behind Orochimaru. He couldn't help but feel a wave of relief that he hadn't ventured onto the front lines himself.
Gazing out at the surrounding devastation, both Orochimaru and Suigetsu were struck with profound astonishment. Severed mountaintops, boundless fields of rubble, and completely hollowed-out forests met their eyes.
"Is this... really something a human being is capable of?" Suigetsu muttered under his breath.
"This is the true, unadulterated power of Kanon and Madara..." Even Orochimaru found himself momentarily at a loss for words.
As he searched the perimeter, he discovered only four corpses.
Tsunade's body was a bloody, mangled mess, though she remained enveloped by Katsuyu, leaving her ultimate survival uncertain. Onoki's head had been completely severed from his torso, leaving a jagged, horrific wound that suggested his neck had been violently wrung off by sheer force.
The Raikage and Mei Terumi had been reduced to charred cinders, both cleanly bifurcated down the middle.
In other words, of the Five Kage, four were dead. Only the youngest, Gaara, had been salvaged at the cost of the other four desperately throwing their lives on the line to shield him.
"What a truly wretched battlefield," Orochimaru lamented.
"Is that bloody, halved mess over there the Hokage?!" Suigetsu pointed a finger toward Tsunade.
"What a pathetic sight, Tsunade," Orochimaru sighed, shaking his head helplessly. He then whispered softly to Suigetsu:
"Forget about the other Kage; they are already dead. But Tsunade might still have a breath left in her, though she's in terrible shape. Hurry, we need to take her back."
"Huh?! Am I the one who has to carry her too?" Suigetsu asked, taken aback.
"Correct. As long as Katsuyu is present, Tsunade still has a sliver of hope for survival."
"I expect it was out of respect for her master-disciple bond with Jiraiya that Kanon spared Tsunade this final spark of life," Orochimaru deduced as he swiftly departed the area, bringing both Tsunade and Gaara along.
…
Inside the Kamui dimension.
Obito looked at Kakashi, a cold sneer twisting his features. "You always did know how to flap your gums. Only by abandoning reality... abandoning the memories shared with your comrades in this world..."
"Can one achieve true happiness."
Kakashi closed his right eye, staring directly at Obito with his left Sharingan, his tone completely flat. "In the shinobi world, those who break the rules are called scum. But those who abandon their friends are worse than scum."
Indeed, Kakashi was turning Obito's own historic words back against him.
"And those who fail to cherish the memories of their comrades are even lower than that!"
Boom!
A fierce arc of lightning flashed violently, fracturing the air with a deafening crack.
Kakashi's Lightning Blade and Obito's giant fūma shuriken pierced clean through one another in a devastating mutual strike.
Amidst the cascading droplets of blood, fragments of Kakashi's childhood memories with Obito seemed to flash by.
"Obito... can you stop playing this trick? I'm already sick of it! Kanon is running amok out there."
At that exact moment, the illusions of Kakashi and Obito were swallowed by a shroud of blue flames as the two locked eyes in reality.
"The genjutsu is over. It seems... I truly have no way of changing your mind."
With those words, Kakashi raised his hand to form a hand sign. Though his voice trembled slightly, it resonated with absolute, unwavering resolve.
"The only thing left that I can do for you now... is to send you to your grave."
"Then the sentiment is mutual. Come!" Obito formed the exact same hand sign in unison with Kakashi, a universal gesture signaling a definitive death match between shinobi.
In the reflection of Kakashi's heart at this moment stood the image of Obito as a child. Conversely, Obito stood facing the vision of Kakashi during their academy days.
It was exactly like their old training sessions. Minamoto-sensei stood right between them, while Rin watched over the pair silently from behind Minato's shadow.
"Now, let the shinobi sparring exercise begin!" Minato's voice echoed within their minds.
As the declaration reverberated through their consciousness, Kakashi and Obito lunged at one another simultaneously.
The absolute instant they clashed, Kakashi threw a blinding punch. Obito ducked under the blow with a sharp tilt of his torso, retaliating with a ferocious whip kick. Their taijutsu exchange was an absolute, flawless deadlock.
This relentless clash of ninjutsu, taijutsu, and raw tactical finesse drove their speeds to dizzying heights.
In this moment, it mirrored their childhood spars perfectly: Kakashi attacking relentlessly while Obito maintained a strict, absolute defense. However, the exchange between Kakashi and Obito within the Kamui dimension lacked the restrained, non-lethal boundaries of their youth.
Before long, one of Kakashi's offensive angles was completely read. Obito launched a precise kick that sent Kakashi hurtling backward through the air. Kakashi tumbled across the ground for several rotations before Obito brought a heavy stomp crashing downward.
Kakashi rolled away just in time to evade the strike, leaving a web of deep fractures spanning across the ground. Bouncing off the terrain, Kakashi executed a flawless midair flip to position himself directly behind Obito, drawing a kunai mid-flight.
The kunai sliced through the air with lethal velocity, thrusting directly toward Obito. A flash of white metadata glinted as the heavy chains Obito used to secure his Uchiha War Fan were repurposed into a makeshift weapon, lashing out to intercept Kakashi's kunai.
Sure enough, after three rapid exchanges, Kakashi's kunai was deflected clean out of his grip. Yet, this was precisely the opening Kakashi had intended to sell. He thrust his hands forward to push off Obito's frame, executing a midair flip that allowed his heel to strike the falling kunai.
The kunai transformed into a blur, slicing open Obito's cheek before embedding itself deep into the ground.
Obito retaliated with a devastating punch. Kakashi managed to cross his forearms to block, but the sheer momentum still violently propelled him back several meters.
The laceration on Obito's face began to stitch itself back together. His features gradually contorted into a malevolent, heavily distorted expression, a sickening, pathological smile identical to Kanon's.
A black receiver slid out into his right palm. He rolled his neck with a dull click and charged directly at Kakashi.
Recognizing the black rod generated by the Rinnegan, Kakashi rapidly drew two kunai, engaging Obito in a frantic, high-stakes melee clash.
The battle raged on with absolute ferocity. Every movement from the pair was lightning-fast and lethal, each subsequent strike carrying a fatal intent. Sparks erupted across the Kamui dimension, punctuated by a continuous sequence of explosions as their weapons collided.
Kakashi constantly analyzed Obito's rhythm and combat patterns, searching desperately for a fatal flaw. Obito, meanwhile, relied on the kinetic predictive capabilities of his Sharingan to counter Kakashi's varied assaults.
The battle felt exactly like the ninja spars of their childhood, yet this particular exercise demanded their very lives.
Moments later, Kakashi's kunai was batted away by Obito, and Obito's black receiver suffered the exact same fate. Left with no weapons, the two locked hands, pitting their raw physical strength against one another.
Obito looked at Kakashi, a faint nod gracing his features before he spoke with chilling indifference: "I'll be borrowing your hand for a moment."
Kakashi's eyes widened in sudden shock as he looked down at his right hand.
Snake – Ram – Monkey – Boar – Horse – Tiger.
Obito forcibly utilized Kakashi's hand to weave a sequence of signs, immediately following it up with a brutal snap-kick directly to Kakashi's chin, launching him backward into the air.
As Obito leaped backward to create distance, he looked exactly like his childhood self.
"Fire Release: Great Fireball Technique!"
Kakashi's hands blurred into a sequence of signs before slamming heavily onto the earth. "Mud Wall!" A massive stone barrier adorned with sculpted pug heads rose from the ground, absorbing the brunt of the Great Fireball Technique.
An intense wave of heat washed past Kakashi's perimeter, followed closely by a thick, rising shroud of dust and debris.
Suddenly detecting the whistling sound of an approaching kunai, Kakashi snapped his head toward the right, only to realize that the object emerging from the smoke was merely a bundle of clothes wrapped tightly around a kunai.
A feint! Sure enough, by the time a realizing Kakashi managed to pivot his gaze back, Obito's whip kick connected cleanly, hammering Kakashi violently into his own mud wall.
Just as Obito drew a black receiver to deliver the finishing blow, another Kakashi erupted violently from beneath the earth, driving a kunai upward to impale Obito.
Obito's Sharingan failed to see through the clone in time. His right hand plunged his own black receiver downward, aiming directly for the heart of the Kakashi before him.
Yet, this Kakashi instantaneously detonated into a Lightning Clone, unleashing a violent surge of electricity that left Obito completely paralyzed and numb!
Seizing the opening, Kakashi drove a brutal kick straight into Obito's jaw, followed by another heavy strike that launched him tumbling dozens of meters across the fractured ground before finally coming to a halt.
————
NOTE: This fic has been completely translated. If you want to read the whole story head over to my p-atre-on: p-atre-on.c-om/Overgod [Just remove the hyphen to access normally]